The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
More than two years ago, when KenyaÕs current opposition leader, Raila Odinga, quit President Mwai KibakiÕs government, I wrote the following: ÒThe trick will be to get Kibaki out without triggering a wave of violence that would do the country grave and permanent damage....Bad times are coming to Kenya.Ó The bad times have arrived, but the violence that has swept Kenya since the stolen election on December 27 is not just African ÒtribalismÓ. This confrontation is about trust betrayed, hopes dashed, and patience strained to the breaking point. Nobody wants a civil war in Kenya, but itÕs easy to see why Raila Odinga rejects calls from abroad to accept the figures for the national vote that were announced December 29. If Odinga enters a Ògovernment of national unityÓ under Kibaki, as the African Union and the United States want, then heÕs back in the untenable situation that he was in until 2005, and Kibaki will run Kenya for another five years. If Odinga leaves it to KenyaÕs courts to settle, the result will be the same: there have been no verdicts yet on disputed results that went to the courts after the 2002 election. So when the opposition leader was asked by the BBC if he would urge his supporters to calm down, he replied: ÒI refuse to be asked to give the Kenyan people an anesthetic so that they can be raped.Ó Despite the ugly scenes of recent days, Kenya is not an ethnic tinderbox where people automatically back their own tribe and hate everyone else. It is clear that more than half the people who voted Mwai Kibaki into the presidency in 2002 were not of his Kikuyu tribe, because they only account for 22 per cent of the population. KibakiÕs appeal was the promise of honest government after 24 years of oppressive rule. If he had been just another thug in a suit, most Kenyans would have put up with KibakiÕs subsequent behaviour in the same old cynical way, but his victory was seen as the dawn of a new Kenya where the bad old ways no longer reigned. It is his abuse of their high hopes that makes the current situation so emotional. Reformers Most of the leading reformers quit KibakiÕs government in 2005, and in the weeks before last monthÕs election their main political vehicle, the Orange Democratic Movement, had a clear lead in the polls. That lead was confirmed in the parliamentary vote on December 27, which saw half of KibakiÕs cabinet ministers lose their seats and gave the opposition a clear majority in parliament. But the presidential vote was another matter. Raila Odinga won an easy majority in six of KenyaÕs eight provinces, but in Central, the Kikuyu heartland, the results were withheld until long after the vote had been announced for more remote regions. Observers were banned from the counting stations in Central and the central tallying room Ð and on December 30 Samuel Kivuitu, chairman of the electoral commission, declared that Kibaki had won the national vote by just 232,000 votes in a nation of 34 million. It stank to high heaven. Ridiculously high turnouts were claimed for polling stations in Central Ð larger than the total of eligible voters, in some cases Ð and 97.3 percent of the votes there allegedly went to Kibaki. It was an operation designed to return Kibaki to office while preserving a facade of democratic credibility. But Kibaki is digging in, and innocent Kikuyus Ð many of whom did not vote for Kibaki, despite the announced results Ð are being attacked by furious people from other tribes. Meanwhile, the police and army obey KibakiÕs orders and attack non-Kikuyu protesters. It is not Odinga who needs to accept the ÒresultÓ in order to save Kenya from calamity; it is Kibaki who needs to step down. He probably wonÕt, in which case violence may claim yet another African country. But donÕt blame it on mere ÒtribalismÓ. Kenyans are not fools, and they know they have been betrayed.
